Dating Or Just Hanging Out
The dating stage of a relationship is a really essential element of relationship structure. It is a time planned for knowing, for sharing– ideas, hopes, dreams, worries– and for bonding. If we avoid this vital stage, what then, are we bringing upon ourselves?
My 13-year-old kid practically summarized what passes for the development of relationships today like this:
” Two individuals hang out together for a while with a lot of other individuals,” he stated. “Then, they choose they wan na get wed, have some kids, choose they do not like each other and what they’ve gotten themselves into, get a divorce, and need to pay kid assistance.”
Are we really “avoiding” the dating stage entirely, jumping from intro to engagement without ever actually taking the time to get to understand each other? Without any real bonding or relationship structure at all? Have we, as a society, entirely removed the real “date” and chose for simply “hanging out” rather?
Today, we hear couples state they are going on a date, and after that typically the couple participates in some group function or getaway in a public location where great deals of their buddies are collected. They all simply “hang out” together, at the shopping center or at the motion pictures, making what was expected to be a time of sharing and being familiar with one another more of a group gathering than anything.
Possibly something essential is being neglected of many relationships today, which something is the dating stage.
It wasn’t constantly by doing this. When there was a “chain of command” for all things relationship-py, and it went something like this: There was an intro, which advanced to periodic conferences at adult-chaperoned occasions, and after that came the dating stage.
The function of dating, then, might be referred to as a stage of time in 2 individuals’s lives invested together as a couple in order to get to understand one another much better as private individuals, on an individually basis.
Time invested together out of the shadow of their peers, throughout which they might be themselves … their genuine, real selves … and choose if who and what each of them were as people would be much better, more powerful, more capable and gorgeous combined into one entity, which it would be, if they came together as a couple.
If and just if this dating stage of a relationship worked out (suggesting the couple included chose, based upon time invested together being familiar with each other on a much deeper, more individual level, that the components needed for a long-lasting, permanently type of relationship existed in between them), there was generally an engagement revealed, and lastly, a marital relationship.
Consider this the next time you’re asked to go on a date. Are you genuinely dating?
The dating stage of a relationship is an extremely essential element of relationship structure. Are we really “avoiding” the dating stage entirely, jumping from intro to engagement without ever actually taking the time to get to understand each other? Have we, as a society, totally removed the real “date” and decided for simply “hanging out” rather?
Consider this the next time you’re asked to go on a date. Are you really dating?